She’d gone uptime, safe and sound, and that was that. Frannie hadn’t even gotten much satisfaction out of killing a half dozen of the invaders to get safely to her up point. It was when she was offered self-
editing software by her controller to keep certain details out of her reports – for a price – that she began to understand that the system wasn’t perfect, it certainly wasn’t pure, and those who didn’t bend rules became broken and washed up. She liked her job too much to leave, but she still lived by the rules ninety-
nine per cent of the time.
She couldn’t do anything to help the people squashed in around her now, and she hated the reminder so much it made her stomach roil and her head hurt like hell.
She didn’t bother observing her fellow passengers. She kept her head raised toward the tarpaulin roof and didn’t listen to anything that was said. Not that the refugees did much more than try to hide their fear and conceal what little hope they had to cling to. Never admitting to having anything that could be exploited or snatched away was the best way to survive this time and place.
Frannie could only thank the All-Seeing that the descendants of these people would have an easier life.
Not that it would come for free. And not at all if the Starshine fanatics’ attempts at good deeds got in the way of how the future needed to roll.
At least the trip in the back of the truck didn’t last more than a few hours.
It was very dark outside when the truck stopped its slow, swaying, bumping gear-grinding progress. A shiver of worry went through the occupants, replaced by indifference when Rakesh lifted the tarpaulin over the back and called, “Francine.”
She squeezed her way through the crowd to the exit, and got no help from Rakesh jumping to the ground. She landed in a puddle and stumbled. Without night-vision implants she wouldn’t have been able to see the figure of Rakesh already walking briskly off into the darkness. She hurried to catch up with him, and then got her bearings. She checked GPS to find out where they were. The answer came as no surprise.
“Please tell me we aren’t heading for Sangatte,” she said when they were striding side by side.
Sangatte had started as a refugee camp a century earlier. It was so much worse than a wretched place for displaced people in this time; it was more like the first circle of hell. Over the decades it had been closed, closed again, burned, and there had been at least one massacre trying to drive everyone out. The place simply wouldn’t go away. It couldn’t go away. It was a final resting place just one step out of the grave for thousands with nowhere else to go.
“We’re not going in,” he answered. “We’ll stay at the supply station two kilometers out.”
“You have deliveries,” she guessed. “To and from?”
“That’s right.”
She could also guess what he was carrying. “Forged visa chips for countries that still let people in?”
He gave her a hostile look. “You going to report me, Elect?”
“Elite,” she reminded. “Hell, no. There’s few enough spots on this planet that are safe. I don’t begrudge anyone getting to them who can.”
“Good to know your opinion,” he said. “Because I was going to kill you if you went all righteous on me.”
She was fully aware that he’d started life as a super-soldier. She gave him a smile without a hint of bravado in it. “I would so love to see you try,” she told him.
As far as she could tell, Rakesh took no part in the buying and selling of false IDs; he was a courier. He delivered a package to a tent on the outskirts of the camp outside Sangatte, then settled down at a table in what could best be described as a den of iniquity and waited with a glass of dark liquid by his hand while word went out that the mailman had arrived.
Frannie received an annoyed look when she sat down beside him. “My presence will keep the hookers off you,” she told him.
“Who says I want to keep them away?” He gestured. “Not that the stable roams around freely in here.”
She glanced under her lashes at a row of skinny girls and boys lined up along a side wall, waiting.
They each stood beneath a crudely painted number. Every now and then one of the pimps conducting business at a nearby table would call out a number, and one of the sex-workers would leave with a buyer.
Everyone involved seemed more bored with the transaction than anything else, even the customers.
Of course there was no prostitution in her time. Not that people didn’t pay for sex, they just didn’t have it with each other. It was all very virtual and virtuous and nobody died from STDs. People still made a profit on it, of course.
What was the matter with her? She shook her head, trying to clear out at least a little of the cynical mood that had descended on her since her arrival downtime. She lived in a Utopia. Almost a Utopia. As close as humans could get to a Utopia. The population was stable, everyone had food, clothing, shelter, employment, education, leisure time, medical care. Not everybody was equal, but everybody was fine.
The planet wasn’t completely healed from the dark times yet, but it was being made greener every year.
All right, there was a stratified social order in place, but from her spot at the top she couldn’t see all the way down to where the dissatisfaction with things as they were bubbled and brewed.
“There’s no way the world can be perfect,” she murmured. “But it’s sure as hell better than this.”
“What the hell are you doing out here, then? Slumming outside the CERN hole when the whole world’s a slum?”
She wished she hadn’t spoken. For a man who didn’t invite conversation Rakesh was fired up for one now. Confrontation, more like. “I’m not from the CERN Enclave.”
In fact, she was a Hillbilly. Her ancestors resided underground at the Appalachian Enclave. CERN was where her profession originated, as the place had been home to scientists who fiddled around with physics while waiting for the apocalypse to calm down.
“Why are you here? Why do you need to get to New York?”
“I was under the impression you didn’t ask questions about your delivery jobs. Why do you roam the world?”
“Because I can.”
“See, that’s the kind of bullshit answer I’d expect from a macho war-fighter type. I thought mailmen were trying to save the world, doing what they could to keep civilization going.”
Apparently she was up for a confrontation too.
He said, “I do what I can. Don’t lay that macho military shit on me. I walked away from war, but I didn’t leave the world. What do the Elect do to help anyone but themselves?”
“Elite.We saved the knowledge.”
“Let it free. That’s what we need.”
She leaned in close to him to keep the conversation private. Not that anybody in this place would pay attention to anything less than a gun battle breaking out, and then only to duck, or to scavenge the bodies.
He smelled of dust, sweat and ink, and she found the combination rather intriguing. Their gazes met and held, and she saw how deeply he cared about everything burning deeply in his eyes. And his gaze burned deep into her soul. She was goddamned stripped naked all the way through, with no interest in trying to hide anything from this man. He knew her insatiable curiosity, her doubts, her regrets and hopes.